Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

The revolution will be supervised.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

This blog will pay for itself.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

… among the most cringeworthy communications in the history of the alphabet!

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Everybody saw this coming.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Open Thread: A Day Late But Definitely Not a Dollar Short

Open Thread: A Day Late But Definitely Not a Dollar Short

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Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, spoke to the White House Press Corps yesterday.

I don’t know that Jake Sullivan gets a lot of attention, but he is most definitely worth listening to today.  And by today I mean yesterday.  He talked for 24 minutes, starting at 1:18 and ending at 1:42.  Definitely worth a listen as he talks about President Biden’s meeting with Putin.

He’s very good.  Such a relief to have the grown-ups in charge.

Shorter: Putin is probably not happy with a President who knows what he’s doing.

What other good things is the Biden team up to this week?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  1. 1.

    Patricia Kayden

    Thank goodness for President Biden!! It’s a relief to have an intelligent adult in the White House.

  2. 2.

    Old School

    At the 2021 Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit, U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power announced on behalf of the White House that the United States intends to invest up to $11 billion over three years, subject to Congressional appropriations, to combat global malnutrition, the underlying cause of almost half of childhood deaths globally.

    …

    Today, President Biden will sign an executive order that demonstrates how the United States will leverage its scale and procurement power to lead by example in tackling the climate crisis. The executive order will reduce emissions across federal operations, invest in American clean energy industries and manufacturing, and create clean, healthy, and resilient communities.

  3. 3.

    H.E.Wolf

    Dec. 7th was the first Maternal Health Day of Action (“Call to Action” Summit) sponsored by the White House. VP Kamala Harris presided. https://twitter.com/VP/status/1468234931385995264

    On Dec. 1, VP Harris spotlighted the Protecting Moms Who Served Act, recently signed into law by President Biden. It is designed to expand and diversify the maternal health workforce and improve mental health. https://twitter.com/KamalaHarris/status/1466213024260366336

    These are family-focused issues as much as they are “women’s” issues. Only rarely does one become a mater without a pater somewhere in the mix. :)

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    What other good things is the Biden team up to this week?

    Not only this week, but not using Twitter as a personal whine bar must be ranked as a plus.

  5. 5.

    West of the Rockies

    I know David Brooks is much loathed here.  But I will say that his last couple of essays have acknowledged that the Republican Party is in ruins.  He has a long essay in The Atlantic.  It is articulate.  I see the glimmer of a man not wholly-devoid of integrity and intelligence.  I think he may be joining (maybe not Rubin) Frum and David Jolly and others.  I count that as not a bad thing.

    Will Halfwit and Thiessen ever get there?  No damn way.

  6. 6.

    Scout211

    This one is more local, but it’s a very good thing that California is in the process of planning.  California plans to be an abortion sanctuary if Roe is overturned.

     

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states.

    The California Future of Abortion Council, made up of more than 40 abortion providers and advocacy groups, released a list of 45 recommendations for the state to consider if the high court overturns Roe v. Wade – the 48-year-old decision that forbids states from outlawing abortion.

    The recommendations are not just a liberal fantasy. Some of the state’s most important policymakers helped write them, including Toni Atkins, the San Diego Democrat who leads the state Senate and attended multiple meetings.

    Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom started the group himself and in an interview last week with The Associated Press said some of the report’s details will be included in his budget proposal in January.

     

    The report recommends funding – including public spending – to support patients seeking abortion for travel expenses such as gas, lodging, transportation and child care. It asks lawmakers to reimburse abortion providers for services to those who can’t afford to pay – including those who travel to California from other states whose income is low enough that they would qualify for state-funded abortions under Medicaid if they lived there.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    @Scout211: ​ We need to be ready on the entire Left Coast. Especially in the eastern portions. I know Washington and Oregon will start getting a stream of women from Idaho and Montana at least. We’ll have to see what happens but it won’t be pretty.

  9. 9.

    Anoniminous

    Reverse the ban on RU-486 and make “Morning-After” pills free and widely available and Fuck the Supreme Court

  10. 10.

    Ken

    @Scout211: “Hi, you states planning to ban abortion?  We have a budget surplus that’s bigger than your entire state budget. Lot of freedom in that.”

  12. 12.

    cain

    The next attack will be to try to go  after the blue states (who have all the money) – and by that I mean trying to get their people into the various institutions. We must be wary of that – I know that they’ve already tried to do some of that here in Portland and surrounding cities. My wife is building curriculum that is equitable for students in her school system and I know she is going to eventually be attacked.

    And boy howdy – if Congress flips or even the presidency the feds are going to play hard ball with this particular thing.

  13. 13.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @West of the Rockies: Brooks is a lightweight, a polymath manque, a bargain-basement James Burke, the intellectual analogue of nouveau riche, always eager to pretend to more knowledge, and specifically to better-integrated knowledge, than he in fact possesses.

    As such, he may resile from rhetorical and actual violence, but he is also accustomed to making exquisitely oblique excuses for plenty of things that he resiles from.

    The bottom line is that, like Joe Manchin, he is unpredictable.  If he says something this morning that sounds correct or even insightful, by nightfall he will be saying things that are even more foolish than vile.

    You damn him with faint praise; I will not even give him stopped-clock credit, because the hands of the clock have come off their arbors and are merely swinging to the jolts of the tumbril.

  17. 17.

    artem1s

    I love the AG’s lawsuit RE: TX gerrymandering. Put Roberts on record for the awful decisions that have occurred under his tenure. Make him and the rest of the Dominionist court declare openly that the judicial branch has abandoned the rule of law and democracy to support white christian nationalist extremists.

    WORST.CHIEF.JUSTICE.EVER.
    Taney doesn’t come close to this deplorable.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    @West of the Rockies:

    Turned out the whole of the afterlife is an infinite number of concrete benches arrayed in what looked like an East German dentist’s waiting room, with the TVs on eternal vertical roll.

    So I came back.

    ;)

  27. 27.

    laura

    @Anoniminous: RU-486 and Plan B do nothing for 2nd or 3rd trimester abortions. Sorry, but this is not nearly the solution it may appear at first glance. Pregnant people will be harmed and will die as a result of stripping away Consitutional Rights.

  28. 28.

    SpaceUnit

    I didn’t watch the posted video conference, but I think it’s safe to assume that Putin’s main priority for the foreseeable future is going to be damaging Biden’s presidency in any way possible and that it’s best to view his actions on the Ukrainian border through that cynical lens.

    Whatever his larger geopolitical goals they will be best facilitated by having his fawning and obedient puppet reinstalled in the White House.

     

    ETA:  I think it’s also safe to say that he will be coordinating these efforts with the good patriots at Fox News Channel and other right wing media outlets.

  29. 29.

    debbie

    So, the Ohio Supreme Court is hearing arguments on the ridiculous redistricting map created by the GQP and signed into law by Gov. DeWine.

    Opponents of the maps say they violate a portion of reforms passed overwhelmingly by Ohio voters in 2015. Section 6 required the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission to attempt to draw maps that “correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters of Ohio.”

    The statewide voting preferences of Ohioans average out to about 54% of the vote for Republican candidates and 46% for Democratic candidates over the past decade. 

    Republicans justified their maps by saying voters preferred GOP candidates between 54% and 81% of the time. Those figures are the average percentage of votes GOP candidates received in recent statewide elections and the percent of statewide races won by Republicans over the past decade, respectively.

    Who comes up with this bullshit math ???

  31. 31.

    Ruckus

    @germy:

    Yes.

    My dad died with my arm around his shoulder after suffering from Alzheimers for almost 20 yrs. I was of course sad to see/feel him go, but the where ever or no where that he ended up is better than the last decade of his life. He’s not the only person I’ve known that can be said of.

  32. 32.

    Betty

    @cain: And that book was somewhat of a scam as he included misinformation about the place he supposedly visited as support for the dumb things he said in it.

  33. 33.

    Fake Irishman

    Small thing, but Chuck Schumer just filed for cloture on three more judges, two for the appeals courts( and all three women)I suspect final confirmation  votes will be next Monday. That would give Biden 11 appeals judges and 20 district picks confirmed, which is a solid achievement. I think Schumer will try to move on several more batches before going home ofr the holidays.

  38. 38.

    NotMax

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    There was (is?)* a shop not terribly distant from where I’m sitting which specialized in selling wood-burning stoves and also in installing fireplaces.

    *Have not traveled that way for years.

  41. 41.

    Doug

    Yet another reason to lament 2016 is that the tandem of Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel would have well and truly had Putin’s number.

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